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Sep 17, 2007

A story in Wired shows that even major corporates are vulnerable to hackers and spammers. At least 138 Pfizer computers have been blacklisted for distributing spam for drugs such as Viagra, a Pfizer product, and Cialis, a competitor's product. The computers have presumably been taken over as 'bots' or 'zombies', remotely controlled by the hackers and used to distribute spam. It is entirely possible that the compromised machines have access to Pfizer's valuable proprietary information. Previous stories about Pfizer employees using peer-to-peer software, for example, indicate the kinds of information security weaknesses that could have led to the infections but, not surprisingly, Pfizer is not saying much about it.